The events unfolded;
John Swinney destroyed the career of fellow Minister Mark Macdonald without informing Sturgeon. Flush with success, he released his hounds on Alex Salmond the day after.
01 Nov 2017: Miss A, (who was also an elected local councillor for the Labour Party) said that James Dornan MSP, her boss, had been contacted by someone, possibly McCann, from SNP Party headquarters
Without consulting her, Dornan sent McCann copies of her private Twitter messages of 26 September 2016. Dornan had retained them for over a year without her knowledge. His underhanded behaviour aptly fit the profile of senior officials of the SNP whose practice is to retain information which they later use to bring to account officers and/or staff who might fall foul of the Party hierarchy.
02 Nov 2017: Mark was ordered to attend a meeting with John Swinney at which Liz Lloyd was present, and was informed that there was ongoing “chatter” among Party members about him in relation to the “MeToo” movement.
03 Nov 2017: Liz Lloyd convened a second meeting with Mark at which she showed him copies of his messages to Miss A. She said a complaint had been lodged against him by, James Dornan, and informed him that his position as a minister of the government was no longer tenable and he would need to resign.
05 Nov 2017: Mark resigned as minister for childcare and early years.
07 Nov 2017: In a weird turn of events, Sturgeon dismissed the notion that Mark should have been forced to resign, claiming that “Some may well have thought it was not serious enough to resign for.”
Swinney and Lloyd acted without Sturgeon’s authority, begging the question. Who was running the Party?
Murrell told the Holyrood Inquiry that Party policy dictated the handling of complaints within the Party was the responsibility of the Party Executive and it did not share case details with any other organisation unless the complaint highlighted a “clear act of criminality”.
Contradicting Lloyd, Murrell told the Inquiry that the Party had not informed any Scottish Government civil servant or special advisor of a complaint by a Party member against a minister of the Government in the Autumn of 2017. Lloyd lied.
Swinney and Lloyd contravened the ministerial code and should have been dismissed by Sturgeon.
Hamilton, the independent investigator, failed to address the issue, which was surprising given Sturgeon’s previous comments.
